The RetroEngine Sigma seems like it’s a stylish and easy way to obtain emulator console gaming. Since the best value I got out of the failed “microconsole” revolution was its value as an emulator platform, and putting together your own emulator out of a Raspberry PI is a non-trivial task, I get the appeal.

If you want to play more than the 15 licensed classic games that ship with it (including Heavy Barrel, Burger Time, Karate Champ, Lock ‘n Chase, and a bunch of ones I’m far less familiar with), though, I imagine that will take a bit of effort anyway, although they promise an easy-to-use method of setting it up via a smartphone or tablet. Considering the price isn’t a whole lot more than the cost of putting the whole thing together from scratch (assuming you don’t have parts just lying around), and it looks pretty sharp, it seems like a pretty decent deal. And 16 Gb can hold an awful lot of classic games.

There are only a few hours left to jump on the campaign. You can find the RetroEngine Sigma campaign here. As usual, I’m not endorsing it or anything, just pointing it out.

Although – the NES Classic Edition comes at a similar price point with 30 fully legal games. Some folks have even hacked it and gotten it to run more than twice as many games from ROM images. Just sayin’. Although they are pretty hard to find right now. Still… if easy is what you are looking for and you are from the NES generation, it could be a better bet.

It would be lovely if there was an install base large enough to support new development. But then, most folks will probably be used to getting games free for it (well, *cough* replacing ROMs they already own for aging platforms for free). And unless there’s a standard OS for “new” games… not gonna happen. Unless you really want to make games for the SNES the hard way…